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NARI WARD DROPS TRUTHS ABOUT IDENTITY, CITIZENSHIP AT THE ICA pg 15
Trainer’s lifelong love for fitness spells business success pg 10
plus Alvin Ailey troupe proves legacy of dance is alive and well pg 15 On stage: ‘Who Will Sing for Lena?’ pg 16 Thursday, May 4, 2017 • FREE • GREATER BOSTON’S URBAN NEWS SOURCE SINCE 1965 • CELEBRATING 50+ YEARS
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School dept seeks input on BuildBPS Parents’ questions focused more on issues facing current students By YAWU MILLER
BANNER PHOTO
Sadia Mohammed, a Logan Airport worker and Sudanese immigrant, spoke during a rally for passage of the Safe Communities Act.
Immigrant rights focus of May 1 strikes, rallies Some protesters flex economic power, others call for legislation By JULE PATTISON-GORDON
David Cheltenham, an Excel Academy freshman, was among approximately 80 people who took off from school and work on May 1 to instead turn out for an immigrant rights breakfast event hosted by the Cosecha movement. The morning action, at East Boston’s Maverick Landing, was followed
by several events throughout the day, and was among May 1 events that turned out tens of thousands of immigrant and labor rights protestors nationally. Cheltenham had read about families torn apart and seen the anxiety among students at his own school. When on Saturday he learned of Cosecha, an immigrant advocacy movement that is active in several states, he felt he had to act, he said.
“Some of my friends at school said that when Trump was elected they feared for their families’ safety and felt the country they loved turned its back on them,” Cheltenham told the Banner. “It’s not something I can stand by and watch. ... I came to see what’s going on. I wanted to contribute in any way I can.”
See MAY DAY, page 14
A year ago city officials seemed poised to close schools following the release of a hastily-prepared audit that found an excess of seats in the city’s stock of 125 buildings. The audit report, which the city commissioned from the firm McKinsey and Company, sparked controversy among parent activists who were furious at the suggestion that 20 to 50 BPS school buildings could be closed. School department officials quickly distanced themselves from the report. Last week, as city officials made a public presentation of BuildBPS, a planning process for facilities improvements to the city’s school buildings, they cited a shortage of space in the city’s schools for the kinds of classrooms students will need for 21st century learning. “We want flexible facilities,” said Superintendent Tommy Chang, describing the district’s need for new space. “We want space that allows students to perform. We want more light.”
Space concerns
The district is at the beginning of its planning process and has no concrete details on what will get built or where. Chang said the district has the capacity for 69,100 students in buildings as they are currently being used, but that the capacity of the current buildings will drop to 55,500 if classrooms are reconfigured to fit new
ON THE WEB BuildBPS: www.bostonpublicschools.org/
buildbps BPS budget hearing video: www.youtube.
com/watch?v=EDz-bS5d7N4&list=PLQaoo0hI2DAhqKFIIGywpjNUiTpIBGNLb&index=19 methods of teaching and learning. Chang joined other city and school department officials to discuss the BuildBPS planning process at the Richard J. Murphy school in Dorchester last week. School officials, parents and representatives of community groups gathered in the school’s auditorium to listen to Chang’s presentation. After, he and the other department officials responded to questions audience members had written on cards. BPS Operations Chief John Hanlon laid out the premise for the BuildBPS process to the parents in the room, noting that 65 percent of school buildings in Boston were built before World War II, that teaching and learning have changed over the decades and that school buildings need to accommodate those changes. “BuildBPS aims to do that,” he said. Chang explained that classrooms need to be more flexible, to allow students to move from one activity to another, rather than sitting in neat rows as in 19th century school rooms. Under BuildBPS, the city will expand school in areas where the land around them permits and construct new buildings as needed.
See BUILDBPS, page 8
Urban farming’s long local history Minority activists leaders of movement By JULE PATTISON-GORDON
A locally-based tech-savvy hydroponic city farming startup has brought media attention to Boston’s urban agriculture scene. But while a recent article in the London-based Guardian newspaper celebrated the white entrepreneurs behind the startup, it left in the shadows the story of the black activists who jumpstarted the movement more than four decades ago.
The latest media attention went to Freight Farms, a company that sells pre-assembled hydroponic farms housed in recycled freight containers, which can be stored in alleyways, parking lots or other spots of open space available in city environments. The design allows for maintaining a controlled interior climate regardless of outside temperature, and the containers are equipped with a monitoring system tied to a smartphone app. This and similar initiatives are
just another stage of the urban growing movement, say Mel King, who advanced urban farming legislation in the 1970s, and Glynn Lloyd, who lobbied for the legalization enabling the urban agriculture industry in the early 2010s and in 2009 co-founded a farming cooperative with plots in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan. “Folks from the community, we catalyzed a lot of this stuff, going back to changing laws and generating a lot of the urban farming energy in Boston,” said Lloyd,
See GARDENING, page 6
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Vegetables growing in this Thornton Street plot, operated by Haley House and the Hawthorne Youth and Community Center, end up on pizzas served at Dudley Dough.